Is there a USA market for this $149 FCC certified unlocked GSM / UMTS dual sim phone?

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by Tony

The rest of the world is mostly aware. It’s fascinating to me as an “outsider” that USA is supposed to be the very heart of “free market” liberty, yet when it comes to phones USA is almost a closed shop owned by the carriers and a few big brand phone manufacturers.

This is largely due to the fact that, unlike European carriers, US carriers get to pick their technology. The market is pretty well split between CDMA and GSM. With CDMA you pretty well have to use the phone the carrier provides.

You good guys have many different sorts of USA pre-paid sim cards in your signature lines.

Would you be good enough to tell me the advantage of having a spread of sim cards like that as I can’t even begin to understand the USA reasoning from my long distance away.

There's not a great deal of advantage, except perhaps that one may have coverage in places where the other does not. There is no big cost advantage like you find in some countries where it may be much more expensive to make internetwork calls than intranetwork calles.

I have to emphasize that probably less than 1% of US cellular customers even consider using a phone that is not provided by their carrier. Very few ever bother getting their phones unlocked, even when the carrier will give you the code gratis.